He stopped, his fingers hovering less than an inch above her.
Oh, don’t stop, please …
‘Yes,’ she admitted, snapping it out.
‘Just as well,’ he said, resuming his ministrations. ‘Because my fingers are magnetically drawn to you and I doubt I’ll be able to prise them off.’
‘We must be opposite poles,’ whispered Edie, feeling herself falling into the unknown, head over heels.
‘Perhaps,’ he agreed, both hands now at work on her, stroking and squeezing, while his head dipped low, fanning hot breath on her nipples. ‘Which of us is south and which north? Oh, I think I know. You are cold and heartless north. I am passionate south.’
The tip of his tongue flicked at her right nipple and she squirmed violently.
‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, trying to think and finding it dreadfully hard under these circumstances. ‘The south pole is not warm. It is bitter.’
‘Must we discuss world climate now?’
His mouth closed fully over her nipple and he sucked at it. A silken thread of pure pleasure wound down to the spot between her legs that seemed to be so warm now. Almost too warm, and she was aware of that furtive trickle that sometimes accompanied her most secret thoughts.
His head below her chin, attached to her breast, was a curious sight. She watched him, trying to keep track of where his hands were roaming. One played with her other breast while the other moved lower, over her stomach. His knuckles grazed the curve and swell of her waist and hips, tracing her outline.
She wondered what she should do, if anything. Was it acceptable simply to lie here and bask in the glory of these new stimulants – or should she reciprocate in some way? What was the done thing?
‘Should I … would you like … shall I touch you?’
He raised his head and she was confronted with the rude sight of her nipple, raised and red and shining. She swiftly averted her eyes and looked at Charles, who wore an expression of comic pensiveness.
‘Dear Edie, you bear no responsibility for tonight’s pleasures. I know what I am about, and so all you need do is place your trust in me. Follow my lead and don’t worry about anything but enjoying yourself. Will you do that for me?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘I hope you’ll succeed.’
‘I don’t want to be a disappointment to you.’
‘Oh, Edie, Edie.’ He buried his face briefly in her breasts, then looked back at her. ‘There’s no question of that. No question at all. You could only disappoint me by ordering me out of the room. I trust that isn’t going to happen?’
‘No. I honour my contracts.’
‘Contracts?’ He screwed his face up in frank bemusement. ‘Where do these notions come from? You are unfathomable. But I will fathom you. Oh yes, I will plumb your depths.’ He interspersed these last words with kisses, then Edie gasped as his hand pushed at her inner thigh, causing her to spread her legs.
‘Now, be a good girl and give yourself up to me,’ he whispered.
A good girl would not be doing this.
A good girl would not be allowing a man to gently part the lips of her sex and rub the inner folds with pressuring fingertips. Would a good girl feel this surge of divine pleasure at the touch of a man on her exposed swollen bud?
‘You want me,’ said Charles, presenting it as a fact in his low, assured voice. ‘Even if those lips won’t speak it, these will.’ He tapped at the cleft and moved slowly down her body until he knelt between her thighs, staring between them until Edie thought she might die of shame. She shut her eyes and turned her face away, trying to blot out the image of her most intimate parts being inspected with such naked rapacity.
Without breaking the lazy rhythm of his fingers, Charles leant over and kissed her stomach, several times, each kiss landing lower than the last.
Edie began to twitch, nervous of where the mouth might venture next. She was mortifyingly aware of how her juices flowed and how they must be covering his fingers. She was really no better than she should be, after all. And now he knew it. Oh, this had been a mistake. The way he made her feel placed her in his power in a way she had not expected.
The sensations conferred by his strumming fingers built, slowly but unstoppably, until she wanted to twist away and wrench them off her. When he kissed the soft skin just beneath her lower lips, she moaned before she could stop herself.
‘Mm,’ he said, his voice a warm buzz against her thigh. ‘You want me.’
Still with her head turned sideways and her eyes tight shut, she felt him move back over her, maintaining the inexorable work of his fingers, using his other arm to prop himself an inch or so above her. She felt his heat above her, the tickle of his chest hair on her nipples. She wanted to feel his skin on hers. It was better than all the finest fabrics she had ever worn, better than feathers, better than fur.
‘Open your eyes. Look at me.’
She couldn’t. How could she look at the man who was touching her so scandalously, and to her obvious, treacherous joy?
‘You can’t hide from me. Everything of you is mine. Open them …’
His fingers slowed and then stopped, as if preparing to end the waves of wild ravishment that had possessed her.
She looked at him indignantly. ‘Why? Why can’t I keep my eyes shut?’
‘Lots of reasons,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you two. One, I don’t want you pretending that you’re somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else. I want you here, with me, one hundred per cent, taking responsibility for the fact that you want and need and love the things I’m doing to you.’
Edie felt mutinous, wanting to throw him off, slap his face, anything to alleviate her mortal shame at how strongly he made her respond.
This made him even more horribly smirky and satisfied than ever, though, so she composed her features before he spoke again.
‘Don’t you?’ he said, challenging her almost beyond endurance.
Why did he have to be such a beast?
‘Edie? Answer me.’
‘It’s all right,’ she sulked.
He laughed out loud.
‘Oh, this is fun,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll get more out of you than that before I’ve finished. Anyway, I said I’d give you two reasons for keeping your eyes open. That was one. The other is that I want to see your expression when I make you …’
His voice dropped and his fingers resumed their devilish work between her lower lips.
She struggled for breath, and for mastery of her facial features, her native obstinacy making her want to retain a blank expression to spite him. But neither of these things were governable, and she surrendered first to hectic gasping, then to the twitching of her cheeks and eyes. Finally, the huge surge of sensation washed every other consideration away.
Something beyond her experience was coming to claim her, something Charles Deverell called forth. She rolled her eyes back but he reproached her for it.
‘No, not the ceiling, me. Yes, you’re nearly there, aren’t you? Oh, so nearly there.’
His manipulations of her were no longer lazy. His fingers were firm in both pressure and purpose, and they had found a secret part of her that went deeper than flesh. The unsettling pleasure emanated from a core far inside and radiated outwards until it spilled from her in so many different ways.
However hard she might try to hide her response, there was no chance of it now. Her body gave her away a hundred times, in the tension of her muscles, in the arching of her spine, in the high breathy wail of her voice, in the widening of her eyes and, most damningly of all, in the way she pushed that intimate part of her against his wicked fingers, as if begging for more.
She had been taken over by a force more powerful than she could ever have prepared for. It was at once shameful, terrible, frightening and utterly rapturous.
Charles did not laugh at her, exactly, but she had the feeling that he was cackling triumphantly in some inner place. On the surface, though, he was gentle and s
olicitous, smiling at her throughout her outpouring.
‘Oh, yes, my girl, that’s it,’ he murmured, pressing his hand against her parted lips, still rubbing. ‘That’s what I do to you. You look so scared, love. You come so sweetly, just the way I thought you would.’
She felt the itch of tears at the corners of her eyes. She shut them, determined that she would not be bullied into opening them again until she knew she was safe, and turned her face from him.
‘What’s this?’
Although she was spent, he kept his hand where it was, reminding her of how she was possessed by him now. He had made a mark on her and she could never wipe it clean.
‘Edie?’ He spoke more sternly now.
She swallowed and held her peace. He did not own her. He could not make her do anything. The impulse to cry passed and she let her muscles relax.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she said at last. ‘It is a mere function of the body.’
‘How terribly romantic you are.’
‘Stop teasing. It isn’t fair.’
He was silent for a while, then he reached down to stroke her hair.
She flinched.
‘Don’t be ashamed, Edie,’ he said. ‘What we are doing isn’t wrong. It’s natural. It’s a pleasure, to be embraced.’
‘It isn’t that,’ she said, finally brave enough to open her eyes and look at him. She wanted her gaze to be hostile, but the sight of him knocked her off course. Was he right about the inevitability of falling in love with him? Oh God, what trouble she was in, if so. ‘It isn’t shame, or not entirely.’
‘What is it then?’
‘Anger. I’m angry with myself, and with you. I’m angry that I’ve let myself be … moved … by you. And I’m angry that all these sweet words you’re saying have been said before, to who knows how many poor girls, all of whom believed it, more fool them.’ She paused, even more angry that her breath was becoming ragged, another prelude to tears.
‘You won’t believe me when I say this, but you aren’t those other girls, and never will be. And I don’t want any more girls like that. It was all a long time ago, anyway. My reputation as a rake was made largely pre-war. I’m not that man any more.’
‘You’ll say anything as long as it gets you what you want.’
‘Not to you.’
‘Liar.’
‘Oh, I’m the liar, am I? I don’t think so. I know who you are.’
She sat up, her heart beating wildly.
‘What … do you mean?’ The words almost would not come out through slackening lips.
‘Damn it, I wasn’t going to say anything.’
‘Too late. You’ve done it. Tell me what you mean.’
He took hold of her hands and leant in close to her, his breath warm on her face when he spoke.
‘You’re her daughter, aren’t you? Or some member of her family. But my money’s on her daughter.’
‘Why do you think that?’ But it was a whisper, hardly convincing.
‘It’s pretty obvious, Edie. This whole situation – your desperation to protect her from ruin at my wicked hands. You wouldn’t be doing this without a very compelling motive. But why do you want to protect her when she has clearly been no mother at all to you? She doesn’t know you.’
‘Not yet. Not yet she doesn’t,’ whispered Edie. ‘It wasn’t her fault. She had to forget me. She wasn’t given a choice.’
Charles held her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away the tears that now fell.
‘Oh, what a tangled web …’ he said quietly.
She seized his forearms and held them tight.
‘You won’t tell? Will you? I know you hate her but please …’
‘Well, you’ve certainly given me a stunning piece of ammunition. No, don’t look at me like that. I won’t say anything. Not yet, at least. I can’t promise I never will, Edie. For heaven’s sake, be reasonable. This woman is a living piece of deceit and my father is the poor fool she’s duped into supporting her for the rest of her life. At some point, I will have to tell him.’
‘Charles, please, I’ll give you whatever you want …’
‘Don’t.’
His tone was harsh and his fingers tightened around her face, pushing against her cheekbones.
‘Don’t,’ he said, more levelly, ‘turn me into some monster who uses this to force you into something you don’t want. I’m many things, most of them bad, but I’m not that. I won’t take you just so she gets away with her duplicity.’
‘So you’re … this is ended?’
‘No, Edie, it isn’t ended. I’ll take you, but only because you want to be taken. And you do. The blood of that lying whore might run in your veins but you will be honest with me.’
‘I’ll be honest with you. I hate you. I hate what you are making me and I wish I’d never laid eyes on you.’
He dropped his hold on her and looked at her steadily, drawing a deep breath.
‘Well, that’s rather unequivocal, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I see how things stand.’
He rose from the bed and began gathering up his wet clothes.
Edie reached out, hesitantly, then dropped her arm.
‘You won’t … go to her?’ she said, faint at the thought.
‘If I’m unwelcome here …’ he said, but his attempt at a sneer didn’t quite come off. He was hurt, she realised. She had hurt him. But he deserved it! Oh, it was too difficult.
‘You’re so cruel,’ she said.
He held his clothes against his chest and stared at her.
‘I only want to be kind,’ he said. ‘Kind to you. But you’re afraid of what you feel for me and I can’t fight that tonight, not after all that’s been said.’
‘Charles …’
‘No. I won’t go near your precious mother, don’t worry. I don’t want a part of any contract. I want you. I want you to come to me. And I think you will. Goodnight, Edie.’
She stared at the space he left in the room for a very long time, unable to move or think.
When she lay down, she put the towel to her face and breathed in the smell of his wet hair and his cologne and his cigarettes. Damn him. Damn him to hell.
* * *
The day she found out about her mother had been truly awful.
Her father had been giving a party for the launch of a friend’s book and all the usual bohemians and aesthetes were in attendance, including papa’s publisher, a man whom she had known since childhood but who had never ceased to make her feel uncomfortable in his presence. Barrington Long had that effect on all women, she divined, and most were experienced enough to laugh him off or brush him away like a fly. Edie longed to achieve that level of poise and confidence, but she did not have it yet.
She concentrated on playing the hospitable hostess, mingling with all the different guests, discussing books with the writers and politics with the firebrands. They all doted on their ‘little Edie’, who had sat on cushions listening to radical ideas and new philosophies since she was scarcely old enough to toddle.
Still, as was his wont, Barrington Long had found a chance to monopolise her, creeping up behind while she stood on the balcony taking some air from the smoggy Bloomsbury sky.
‘Ah, Edith,’ he said, his hot breath at her shoulder. ‘You have outdone yourself tonight.’
‘Oh, it’s down to Mrs Fry really,’ she said carelessly. ‘I only chose the menu.’
‘You chose it divinely, my dear.’
‘Thanks. Perhaps I might go in and …’
‘Not on my account, dear Edith? I so wanted to speak to you.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘About what a big grown-up girl you are now.’
Edie felt sick and tightened her hold on the wrought-iron balcony.
‘I’m an adult woman, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. And a damn fine one, too. Filling out in all the right places.’
‘Do stop. I don’t like to hear this.’
She felt him shake when he laughed behind her.
‘I sometimes wonder if you really are your mother’s daughter,’ he said.
‘What? Did you know her?’
Edie turned around now and frowned at him.
‘I should say so. We all did. Intimately.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I’m sorry, my dear, take no notice of me. I’m a little bit the worse for wear.’
‘No, I insist you tell me what you mean. Are you saying that you were her lover as well?’
‘No, I wasn’t. Wishful thinking. She’s a damn fine woman and we all envied your pa no end.’
‘Is a damn fine woman? Don’t you mean was?’
‘Fuck.’
Edie had heard the word before – it was rather fashionable, indeed, in the circles her father moved in – but she slapped Long round the face all the same, then ran into the drawing room in search of her father.
‘Tell me the truth about my mother,’ she demanded, after disengaging him from a cluster of guests. ‘The truth. All of it.’
‘Oh, Edie …’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this …’
Yes. She was still alive. And, what was more, she was famous, and married to an aristocrat. She couldn’t make her father tell her much more about the circumstances of her birth, but she gathered that Ruby Redford had given the baby over to him, explaining that she was better off that way. Theatrical life was not for a baby, and Ruby had a career to consider and a scandal to avoid. ‘These things happen.’
Enraged by her father’s years of silence on the matter, Edie had packed her bags and stomped off to stay with her friends the McCullens, in their chaotic but friendly tenement in Holborn.
It was there that the plan had been hatched. They had been so optimistic, so entranced with their cleverness, so sure it would effect a wonderful reconciliation between mother and daughter, as well as striking a blow for the workers, though they were vaguer on how that element would come into play.
But lying in her bed that night, thinking about Charles on the floor below, Edie did not feel clever at all.
She only felt even more out of her depth than ever.
Justine Elyot Page 12
